Digital Commons Network^™

Creative Commons As Conversational Copyright, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

Copyright law's default settings inhibit sharing and adaptation of creative works even though new digital technologies greatly enhance individuals' capacity to engage in creative conversation. Creative Commons licenses enable a form of conversational copyright through which creators share their works, primarily over the Internet, while asserting some limitation on user's right with respect to works in the licensed commons. More specifically, this chapter explains the problems in copyright law to which Creative Commons licenses respond, the methods chosen, and why the machine-readable and public aspects of the licenses are specific examples of a more general phenomenon in digital copyright law …

El Código De Derecho Canónico: Sus Siete Libros., Rafael Angel Gomez Betancur

Rafael Angel Gómez Betancur

The Alchemy Of Junk: Patent Law And Non-Coding Dna, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

No Time Like The Present: The Eighteenth Century Judicial Power Meets The Twenty-First Century Problem In Massachusetts V. Epa, Jamison E. Colburn

Jamison E. Colburn

In this short commentary, I consider the nature of our judicial power and the Court's standing doctrine in light of the oral argument in Massachusetts et al. v. EPA. My critique is that the Court has invented any number of ways to find that the rule of law can play no role in our climate change debates.

Brief Of Amicus Curiae, The North Carolina Association Of County Commissioners, Ocean Hill Joint Venture, Ocean Hill Properties, Inc., Et Al. V. The Currituck County Board Of Commissioners And Ocean Hill I Property Owners Association, Inc., Matthew W. Sawchak, Julia F. Youngman

Matthew W. Sawchak

No abstract provided.

New Zealand Marine Reserves: Bureaucratic Surplusage Or Community-Driven Conservation?, James Mize

James Mize

Management authorities increasingly view marine reserves - areas of the ocean environment where no extraction of marine life is allowed - as a valuable tool for protecting areas of high biodiversity and as a buffer against scientific uncertainty in managing marine ecosystems. Such measures, however, are not without controversy as communities reliant upon these resources often resist exclusion from their traditional grounds. Thus, efforts at implementing marine reserves as conservation tools have not met widespread acceptance. As a result, marine reserves are oft designated in areas away from the interest of commercial, recreational, or customary users. In some other locations, …

Copyright Issues In Teaching, Sarah Wiant

Sarah K. Wiant

No abstract provided.

Real-World Approach Leads Court To Dump Search, Timothy O'Neill

Timothy P. O'Neill

Time Travel, Hovercrafts, And The Framers: James Madison Sees The Future And Rewrites The Fourth Amendment, George Thomas

George C Thomas III

The Framers could not have contemplated the interpretational problems that cloud the Fourth Amendment because police, in the modern sense, were unknown to the Framers. Also unknown to the Framers, of course, were wiretaps, drug interdiction searches, thermal imagining, helicopters, and blood tests. We can infer from the history surrounding the Fourth Amendment what the Framers hoped it would accomplish in their time. What if the Framers could have seen the future and known the kind of police techniques that are being used today? What kind of Fourth Amendment would they have written with that knowledge? This article seeks to …

Missing Miranda's Story, A Review Of Gary L. Stuart's, Miranda: The Story Of America's Right To Remain Silent, George C. Thomas Iii

George C Thomas III

Miranda v. Arizona is the best known criminal procedure decision in the history of the Supreme Court. It has spawned dozens of books and hundreds of articles. The world does not need another Miranda book unless it has something new and interesting to tell readers. Unfortunately, to borrow an old cliche, the parts of Gary Stuart’s book that are new are, for the most part, not interesting and the parts that are interesting are, for the most part, not new. Stuart adds material to the Miranda storehouse about the involvement of local Arizona lawyers and judges in the original case, …

Justice Story Cuts The Gordian Knot Of Hung Jury Instructions, George C. Thomas Iii, Mark Greenbaum

George C Thomas III

Constitutional law grows more complex over time. The complexity is due, in large part, to the rule of stare decisis. When faced with precedents that it does not wish to follow, the Court usually distinguishes the case before it. Thus, the constitutional landscape is littered with cases that do not fit well together. Navigating past these shoals is often difficult for courts following the Supreme Court’s lead. One example is the law governing instructions that a trial judge can give a deadlocked jury in a criminal case. The right to a jury trial entails the right to have the jury …

Contract Law Is Not Enough: The Many Legal Institutions That Support Contractual Commitments, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

One of the fundamental contributions of transaction cost theory and institutional economics has been to focus attention on opening the "black box" of contract enforcement, drawing attention to the institutions required to achieve effective and low-cost contract enforcement. The idea that the effectiveness of contract law is critical to the growth of economic activity is widespread in the literature on development and transition economies. Recent studies attempting to document toe relative strength of contract enforcement in different settings (La Porta, et al., 19982; Djankov, et al., 2003), however, have focused on relatively abstract notions of "courts" and "legal systems" and …

Hate The Vile Campaign Ads? Blame The Supreme Court, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Federalism: Onshore And Offshore Public Lands In The United States, Owen Anderson

Owen L. Anderson

No abstract provided.

Thesis Paragraphs, Susan Duncan

Susan Duncan

This short bar magazine article helps readers see the importance of including thesis paragraphs in their writing. The article suggests helpful tips for writing powerful thesis paragraphs.

Virtual Power Politics, James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann

Software-based rules are not automatically normative in virtual worlds. The feature-bug ambiguity always means that the social meaning of the "rules" is subject to negotiation and to political dispute. I illustrate this claim with an analysis of exploits.

Natural Gas Opec, Monika Ehrman

Monika U. Ehrman

No abstract provided.

Rural Rhetoric, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This Article investigates law’s constitutive rhetoric about rural people, places, and livelihoods. Specifically, it considers five categories of judicial opinions that discuss the legal relevance of rurality: judicial self-identification as rural; definitions of rural; line-drawing between rural and urban; taking judicial notice of rural characteristics; and idealized portrayals of the rural. Viewed together, these clusters of opinions reveal a comprehensive – if not entirely coherent – judicial portrait of rurality. They also provide an overview of the many instances when a rural setting is relevant to a legal outcome. Implicated are issues of tort, property, criminal, and constitutional law, among …

Having One's Property And Eating It Too: When The Article 9 Security Interest Becomes A Nuisance, F. Knippenberg, Lawrence Ponoroff

F. Stephen Knippenberg

No abstract provided.

Never Get Out'a The Boat: Stenberg V. Carhart And The Future Of American Law, Michael Scaperlanda, John M. Breen

Michael A. Scaperlanda

No abstract provided.

An Escape From Poverty: Developing Productive Organization, Robert D. Cooter

Robert Cooter

Keynote address on "Innovation, Information, and the Poverty of Nations." My premise is that in the modern world, defective legal institutions cause national poverty and that all nations now have the opportunity to escape poverty by developing productive organizations.

Open Access In A Closed Universe: Lexis, Westlaw, Law Schools And The Legal Information Market, Olufunmilayo Arewa

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

This Article considers issues of open access from the context of the broader legal information industry as a whole. The structure and contours of the legal information industry have shaped the availability of legal scholarship and other legal information. The competitive duopoly of Lexis and Westlaw is a particularly important factor in considerations of open access. Also significant is the relationship between Lexis and Westlaw and law schools, which form an important market segment for both Lexis and Westlaw. This Article begins by considering the important role information plays in the law. It then notes the increasing industry concentration that …

Being Informed Does Matter: Fine Tuning Gross Negligence Twenty Plus Years After Van Gorkom, Bernard S. Sharfman

Bernard S Sharfman

This article first establishes that there are still a number of reasons why being informed does matter, despite the ability to incorporate an exculpation clause into a Delaware corporation’s certificate of incorporation. This is followed by an explanation of how Delaware’s business judgment rule became transformed from a doctrine of abstention to a standard of review in the context of procedural due care. Throughout this article, it is understood that the business judgment rule exits within a framework of corporate authority and accountability and that it serves as a significant tool for the protection of corporate board authority. The article …

The Real (Sentencing) World: State Sentencing In The Post-Blakely Era, Douglas A. Berman, Steven L. Chanenson

Steven L. Chanenson

James Joyce Inspires Literary And Legal Career: Literature Lover Left Ivory Tower To Apply Expertise In Ip Arena, Robert E. Spoo

Robert E. Spoo

No abstract provided.

Szerzõdési Szabadság És Paternalizmus: Adalékok A Szerzõdési Jog Közgazdasági Elemzéséhez [Freedom Of Contract And Paternalism: A Contribution To The Economics Of Contract Law] , Peter Cserne

Péter Cserne

No abstract provided.

Ethical Judicial Writing—Part I, Gerald Lebovits

Hon. Gerald Lebovits

No abstract provided.

Never Get Out'a The Boat: Stenberg V. Carhart And The Future Of American Law, Michael Scaperlanda, John M. Breen

John M. Breen

No abstract provided.

Immigration Reform Fuels Employment Discrimination, Natalie Prescott

Natalie Prescott

This Article addresses the tension between two conflicting IRCA provisions: 8 U.S.C. § 1324a, which authorizes sanctions for hiring illegal immigrants, and 8 U.S.C. § 1324b, which provides that employers cannot ask foreign job applicants for proof of work authorization beyond what is specified on the I-9 form.

Tracing, Peter B. Oh

Peter B. Oh

No abstract provided.